The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is reportedly investigating Apple and Samsung smartphones after an independent test by the Chicago Tribune found the phones to be emitting higher RF radiation levels than what is allowed by the FCC.
Apple’s iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 and Samsung’s Galaxy S8, Galaxy S9, and Galaxy J3 emit more Radiofrequency radiation than the FCC allows, according to a test conducted by the RF Exposure Lab in California. The test was paid for by the Chicago Tribune.
“Radiofrequency radiation exposure from the iPhone 7 — one of the most popular smartphones ever sold — measured over the legal safety limit and more than double what Apple reported to federal regulators from its own testing,” reported the Tribune, which added that a total of 11 smartphone models from four different companies were tested, producing “varying results.”
The FCC is now investigating some of the phone models featured in the newspaper’s investigation.
FCC officials would not comment on the results from the independent test — and while they did say the test was not as thorough as what would be required for an official compliance report — the agency will still be conducting its own testing over the next few months.
“We take seriously any claims on non-compliance with the RF (radiofrequency) exposure standards and will be obtaining and testing the subject phones for compliance with FCC rules,” said FCC spokesman Neil Grace.
Apple and Samsung disputed the test results, saying that they do, in fact, comply with FCC regulations. Apple reportedly released a statement claiming that the test results for the iPhone 7s “were inaccurate due to the test setup not being in accordance with procedures necessary to properly assess the iPhone models.”
“All iPhone models, including iPhone 7, are fully certified by the FCC and in every other country where iPhone is sold,” said Apple in its statement. “After careful review and subsequent validation of all iPhone models tested in the (Tribune) report, we confirmed we are in compliance and meet all applicable … exposure guidelines and limits.”
Samsung — which is headquartered in South Korea — also insisted that its products comply with U.S. federal regulations.
“Samsung devices sold in the United States comply with FCC regulations,” said Samsung. “Our devices are tested according to the same test protocols that are used across the industry.”
But the Tribune contends that the RF Exposure Lab “is recognized by the FCC as accredited to test for radiofrequency radiation from electronic devices,” adding that the Lab has been doing radiation testings for the past 15 years for wireless companies seeking to get their new products approved by the government.
“We’re not doing anything extraordinary or different here,” said RF Exposure Lab owner Jay Moulton, adding that any qualified lab “should be able to grab a phone off the shelf and test it to see if it meets requirements.”
The report also mentioned that it is unable to say whether the tested cellphones resulting in radiation above FCC limits could be dangerous, as it is still unclear whether radiofrequency radiation emitted from cellphones can increase the risks of cancer or any other harm.
We already know Never Trump is a boatload of vile grifters and hypocrites, but it’s their sheer stupidity that continues to awe me.
Joe Walsh?
Joe Walsh…?
Joe freakin’ Walsh is the best these wannabe Masters of the Universe could come up with…?
Was there some sort of competition to see if they could do worse than Evan McMullin and David French?
Never Trump clops around the media world wagging their fat fingers at us deplorables, at our indecency, at our immorality for supporting Donald Trump, and to show us just how morally superior they are, Bill Kristol and the Bulwark Boobs pluck a former one-term congressman out of nowhere whose Twitter feed could make David Duke wince.
In order to smear Trump as racist, Never Trump is forced to either straight up lie or to read Trump’s mind and find only the worst possible racist motives for things like, oh, exposing a “Squad” of crazed antisemites as crazed antisemites.
But if you want to prove that the candidate Never Trump supports for president is an unstable racist, all you have to do is quote him accurately. If you want to prove never Trump supports a violent loon, all you need do is embed his verified tweets:
Want to blame someone for Baltimore besides the thugs? Blame Democrats who have purposely turned blacks into uneducated government slaves.
1) Obama’s book sales before 2004 were abysmal. 2) As soon as he became a Senator, he ran for POTUS. 3) Obama got elected because he’s black, not because he accomplished anything significant. pic.twitter.com/FU8XrMlhdT
So not only did Never Trump choose an unstable bigot as their presidential standard-bearer, they chose a bigot who’s so dumb he doesn’t even know how to spell the word “spic.”
Want more…?
Here’s Walsh freaking out at his own constituents at a 2011 town hall… Can’t imagine why he was a one-term congressman:
And then there’s this $117,000 child support suit.
I don’t blame Walsh. He’s a con man, an egomaniac, a dimwit who doesn’t appear to understand that once you announce your political candidacy, equal-time rules mean you can’t have a radio show.
But just look at how stupid Never Trump is in choosing this guy… What kind of inept morons spend three years lecturing the rest of us about morals and decency and then run … Joe Walsh?
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
After NBC News published a hit piece on news outlet the Epoch Times and its association with the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement persecuted by China’s government, the Wikipedia page for the outlet was vandalized and filled with attacks sourced to the piece. One editor involved has a history of attacking Falun Gong and defending Chinese communist figures such as Mao Zedong.
The editor also contacted an Antifa-supporting socialist editor with a similar history, which included downplaying the oppression of Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province. Other Wikipedia articles associated with Falun Gong have also been subject to smears from Antifa-supporting editors.
NBC published a report last Tuesday regarding the Epoch Times and its surge of success due largely to its hard-hitting coverage on alleged improprieties in the discredited Russiagate investigation. In their report, NBC smeared this coverage as pushing a “Spygate” conspiracy theory, even though reporters for Epoch Times obtained early access to testimony before the House Intelligence Committee for which they were noted in the New York Times. The report also smeared the outlet for its association with the spiritual movement Falun Gong, perpetuating narratives used to justify China’s decades-long repression of the movement.
Following the NBC report, the Epoch Times Wikipedia page was updated with variousattacks from the piece, including those smearing its Spygate coverage as conspiracy theories. Also included were claims the outlet promoted the “QAnon” conspiracy theories. Responding to NBC’s piece, Epoch Times U.S. editor Jasper Fakkert noted those claims appear to conflate the outlet with a program focused on conspiracy theories that is produced by an affiliated company.
In addition to the edits incorporating details from NBC’s report, the page was repeatedlyvandalized by users referencing the negative characterizations from the NBC story. This included calling the site “pro-Trump propaganda”, claiming it was “run by an end-of-the-world cult”, and accusing it of “anti-democratic actions” despite the outlet’s primary focus being to highlight the authoritarian actions of the Chinese government.
The first editor to add the claims from the NBC report to the Epoch Times page was Pat Cheng, an editor from Australia. Cheng’s prior history includes pushingnegativeinformation about a book extremely critical of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong. Having been inactive since 2006, he returned to editing in June to report an editor for “soap-boxing” in discussions about Falun Gong. In fact, the editor was mainly criticizing various attempts to add poorly-sourced negative information about the spiritual movement to related articles such as edits citing Chinese state media. Cheng’s report got the editor a warning.
One incident cited by Cheng in that report involved the editor criticizing the socialist Antifa-supporting editor “Tsumikiria” for restoring material to the article on Shen Yun, a dance show put on by Falun Gong members, which made claims about the movement unrelated to the show. The material cited a letter to the editor in a small Florida paper. While NBC’s recent coverage appears to have prompted some improvements to the Shen Yun article, the section discussing critical reception has a significantly negative slant focused on the show’s Falun Gong-related messaging. Cheng also contacted editor “Simonm223” about NBC’s coverage. Like Cheng, Simon has a history of editing favorable to China. On the Xinjiang conflict article, Simon repeatedlyremoved material describing allegations of torture and brainwashing of Uyghurs and other Muslims occurring at Chinese re-education camps in the province. He claimed Western media sources weren’t reliable enough to treat the allegations as fact, even though the material only identified them as allegations. While the article on the camps themselves are much more critical, only sparse reference is made of them in the article on the actual conflict due to Simon’s resistance. Breitbart News has been a leader in reporting on the Chinese concentration camps.
Simon and Tsumikiria are both self-identified socialists active on articles related to Antifa where they helped censor the group’s actions such as the assault on Andy Ngo and the terrorist attack on an ICE detention center. Both also mockedvictims such as Ngo and, in Simon’s case, praised the attack on ICE. On Twitter, Simon acknowledged China’s actions were an “authoritarian over-reaction” but contrasted it with actions in the United States where there is no violent insurgency. This is apparently a reference to ICE detention centers being labeled “concentration camps” as done recently on Wikipedia, echoing Democratic rhetoric.
Editors attacking Epoch Times over its criticism of the Russiagate investigation is consistent with early efforts to spin the outcome of Mueller’s probe into the allegations, which discredited the more outrageous accusations against President Trump. Wikipedia’s left-wing bias has mainly received attention in connection with its coverage of issues in American politics such as branding Trump an advocate of “Neo-nazi conspiracy theories” or defending the anti-white bigotry of New York Times editor Sarah Jeong. However, the involvement of the same editors in disputes related to China suggests that bias affects articles of broader interest as well.
T. D. Adler edited Wikipedia as The Devil’s Advocate. He was banned after privately reporting conflict of interest editing by one of the site’s administrators. Due to previous witch-hunts led by mainstream Wikipedians against their critics, Adler writes under an alias.
President Trump recognizes that China is in an all out war with the US in regards to information and economics. For years Western leaders have done nothing but negotiate into weak positions, never standing up to the Communist regime. Former US Presidents treated China like they did Russia 50 years ago, as their superior always giving them what they wanted and never standing up to their abuse and criminal acts.
It is different with President Trump. The President knows he has the authority and ability to inflict a fatal blow to the Chinese economy. The US is arguably in its best economic period in history while China’s economy is its weakest in 30 years.
This weekend President Trump tweeted the following:
For all of the Fake News Reporters that don’t have a clue as to what the law is relative to Presidential powers, China, etc., try looking at the Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. Case closed!
The President knows that now is the time. China cannot handle the US tariffs while their economy implodes. They are on the brink of a massive economic collapse, so colossal that the regime is in danger of being dethroned!
The President retweeted the following post bringing attention to his action to designate China as a currency manipulator, further challenging the regime:
The President also tweeted out orders on Friday for American firms “to immediately start looking for an alternative to China”.
President Trump knows that China needs the US now more than ever but the US doesn’t need China .
….better off without them. The vast amounts of money made and stolen by China from the United States, year after year, for decades, will and must STOP. Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing..
….all deliveries of Fentanyl from China (or anywhere else!). Fentanyl kills 100,000 Americans a year. President Xi said this would stop – it didn’t. Our Economy, because of our gains in the last 2 1/2 years, is MUCH larger than that of China. We will keep it that way!
Steve Bannon’s talk was historic. He discussed how China is at economic war with the US. He said America was losing until President Trump. Then he added this:
Well here’s the game and right now we are converging on a point and they understand this. We could take the whole thing down. We can take, the whole thing’s built on a house of sand…
If they [China] devalue their currency they are just going to flood more out. They got $3 trillion of reserves and trust me, in a New York second that thing would flood out in a second. That’s what their own people think about their economy. We’ve allowed these guys to push us around. We’ve allowed these guys to take the South China Sea…
This trade war is going to end in victory and what you’re going to see is a reorientation of the entire supply chain out of China…
Bannon is right. We reported in May that just like the US in 2008, a perfect storm is building in China. The excessive and extravagant construction projects, cash-flow challenges and lack of demand in China all could combine for a major financial disaster. Trump is right – now is the time to make a deal with China.
As the movie The Big Short showed, in 2008 few individuals saw the US sub-prime crisis before it raised its head.
Politicians would have you believe that the 2008 financial meltdown was related to the more recent actions of one party or the other, but the roots of the 2008 housing market crisis really began in the 1930s with the creation of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which guaranteed banks’ mortgage risks and the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), which effectively insured mortgages by purchasing mortgages from lenders. Both shifted risks from the lenders to the US taxpayers. Then in 1977, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter. This law was designed to promote home ownership for minorities by prohibiting banks from refusing mortgages in poor areas due to the loan’s high risk. In addition, mortgage lenders were required under the 1975 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) to provide data about who they lent to. Then in 1991, HMDA rules were tightened and included specific demands for racial equality in the institution’s lending.
Credit-worthiness was no longer relevant in the US and the volume of subprime loans exploded. The government had inserted itself in the mortgage business. Like most government initiatives, their plans were doomed. Americans lacking the ability to pay for mortgages were provided mortgages at teaser rates that when fully adjusted would never be paid. This ultimately climaxed in 2008 with the subprime crisis that sent shock waves around the world and put financial markets in a tailspin.
A financial meltdown is in the works in China
Over the past few decades, China opened its borders and corporations around the world fled to China due to its cheap capital and meager payroll costs. As a result, China’s economy exploded. Again, from Falling Eagle, Rising Tigers:
While the US is moving more and more towards a welfare state, China is moving more and more towards prosperity. “Since the launch of economic reform in 1978 more people (in China) have been made materially better off in a shorter span of time than ever before in human history.”
China’s rise out of poverty has been dramatic. For example, considering a consumption threshold of $1 a day using the 1993 Power Purchasing Parities (PPP), the World Bank tracked a reduction of poverty from 652 million Chinese people in 1981 to 135 million in 2004. China’s anti-poverty performance is even remarkable with a standard of $1.25 a day at 2005 PPP. “The numbers in poverty by this measure dropped from 848 million in 1981 to 351 million in 2004. This denotes that there were 517 ($1 standard) or 497 million ($1.25 standard) people who had escaped from absolute poverty during 1981-2004.” A half a billion Chinese citizens have risen out of poverty due to China’s changing policies!
The Chinese were relentless in their efforts to obtain Western technology and grow their economy. They set up trade barriers and manipulated their currency in ways that helped China. The US was at a disadvantage in trade resulting in massive deficits in the billions.
Along comes the Trump Administration, the first administration to address China’s unfair trade advantage.The timing of Trump’s tariffs is not good for China as there are more pressing issues that must be addressed. President Trump is a shrewd negotiator and he obviously believes now is the time to encourage China to make changes to their trade barriers with the US. China may have no choice but to go with what the US offers to keep its economy afloat.
The more pressing issues for China surround real estate, in a manner similar to the US in 2008. As China grew, it invested in its infrastructure and in addition, it invested in large housing projects throughout the country. These efforts helped bolster China’s already fast growing economy.
The problem is that China over invested in these random properties all over China and these properties today remain empty.
(See below pictures of real estate projects the middle of China (Hubei Province) – massive but mostly empty.)
There simply are not enough people in the area where these massive complexes were built that make enough money to afford living in these communities. It appears that the Chinese communists misunderstanding of supply and demand economics may be their downfall.
Some say, no problem, China will just move all the peasants to these massive complexes. This will be devastating. First of all China needs to feed them. Secondly, as we have learned in the US, people on the dole with no work tend to get involved in drugs and crime. The human spirit needs a purpose – idle hands are the devil’s workshop!
These many properties throughout China sit unoccupied, and there is a cost to this. Bloomberg reported in September 2018 –
Cash-to-short-term debt levels at more than 80 publicly traded real estate companies tracked by Bloomberg were 133 percent on average in the first half, the worst since the first six months of 2015 and down from 297 percent a year earlier. Almost a quarter of developers sport a ratio below 50 percent.
In addition, Bloomberg noted:
But while business has been booming, developers have also been piling on the debt. Firms have been selling more bonds in the domestic market — and at the cheapest rates as investors shrug off default concerns. Those with dollar-denominated obligations, meanwhile, face higher borrowing costs as the U.S. Federal Reserves continues on its tightening path.
The amount of debt related to China’s over development is massive. The total amount is unknown with S&P estimating the amount not reported by local communities and banks being over $6 trillion:
China may be sitting on a hidden debt pile of as much as 40 trillion yuan ($6 trillion), concealed off-balance-sheet by the country’s local governments, according to research from S&P Global Ratings.
Many local governments in China raise debt and hold it off their balance sheet, in order to avoid lending limits imposed by central authorities. S&P says that this is a growing problem within the country, and that the amount of debt held this way has likely ballooned in recent years.
Not only is the level of hidden debt held by local governments in the world’s second largest economy rising, but so too is the risk of those debts being defaulted on. Much of the debt is held by so-called local government financing vehicles (LGFVs), and S&P reports that central government may be willing to let these vehicles file for bankruptcy in the future.
“Default risk of LGFVs is on the rise. China has opened up the possibility of insolvent LGFVs filing for bankruptcy, but managing the default aftermath is a formidable task for top leadership,” the report noted….
The country’s total non-financial sector debt, which includes household, corporate and government debt, will surge to almost 300% of GDP by 2022, up from 242% in 2016. Fears abound that if this debt pile continues to grow, a spectacular blow up could be imminent.
China’s financial crash may make the 2008 crash in the US look small. The implications will no doubt impact the entire world. This is why China can’t afford to mess around with President Trump and must put together a treaty as soon as possible.
As China falls the US economy will be the one the world runs to and so the impact to the US will be a massive inflow of money resulting in rising markets due to capital infusions.
This morning we discussed all of this with Steve Bannon
Here are some highlights from our discussion –
One of the things I’m excited about talking to you is why I think the Gateway Pundit is so important is the simple fact that you guys do as good or better coverage of anybody.”
I’ve known you [Joe Hoft] for years, I had you on the radio show years ago and on the pages of Breitbart because I said this guy knows China and I think that was in about ’13 or 14’…”
Again, the mainstream media in the United States doesn’t cover the important stories. This is the defining story of the first half of the twenty-first century.”
They have state controlled capitalism, that’s what China has.”
Trump’s deal is so brilliant.”
This Frankenstein [China] is created by the West. The Chinese people are going to free themselves and it has to be from them.”
Over in China you have slave labor.”
This is why Trump is President. The Make America Great Again is about returning America to her former glory as a manufacturing superpower!”
This is the defining narrative for 2020.”
The deplorables, coupled with 20-25% of the African American working class, coupled with 25-30% of the Hispanic working class can form a coalition like in 1932 that can govern the country for 50 years…”
Hong Kong are like the patriots of 1776… these kids… refuse to buckle to the most totalitarian government in modern history.”
Unrestricted Warfare… the most significant book on military strategy…. information, economic and kinetic warfare.”
The moral choice of the West in the first half of the 21st Century is do we confront this now or do we do what the West did in the 1930’s? Do we try to kick the can down the road and have a lot of happy talk and then have to engage in some sort of kinetic conflict sometime in the future? I argue we don’t do that.”
There’s only a handful of people that really get what’s going on and Joe Hoft’s one of them. I’ve known you for years and your stuffs brilliant.”
What happens in Hong Kong over the next several months will determine, I think, the direct of the world for the next couple of decades.
Here is the audio from the interview.
Here is part II of the video.
President Trump is right. Now is the time to deal with China. Hong Kong is the epicenter!
Comedian Dave Chappelle has a new comedy special on Netflix. I haven’t seen it yet but Chappelle is getting some negative reactions from progressives who don’t find his calling out “cancel culture” very funny. Here’s a sample which does contain some NSFW language:
Reason’s Robby Soave says Chappelle also takes on a lot of other subjects which the left doesn’t think should be the butt of jokes:
I don’t expect cancel culture to die off anytime soon, but if it does, it will be because Dave Chappelle shot it to death with the 12-gauge shotgun he was apparently saving for heroin-addicted white people trespassing on his property…
Chappelle humorously critiques school mass shooting drills, Jussie Smollett, the excesses of the #MeToo movement, and LGBTQ activists—or “the alphabet people” as he calls them—for thinking they should be immune from mockery.
Meanwhile, Vice is recommending that people skip the special because Chappelle is making the wrong kind of jokes:
Fans quickly realized that, if you watch until the very end, the special has a secret epilogue called “The Punchline,” where Chappelle answers questions from audience members who went to his separate Dave Chappelle on Broadway stand-up show last July. The special takes the comic’s anti-wokeness schtick to a new level, and the whole thing is repetitive and exhausting enough that it’s a slog to even make it to the Q&A.
Chappelle has always been a daredevil comedian willing to take a controversial stance or downplay a serious controversy for laughs, including his early-2000s skits about R. Kelly’s court trials on Chappelle’s Show. But now he chooses to blatantly ignore the historic criticism against his style of comedy and new loud-and-clear criticism from the trans community. His approach comes off like a defiant rejection of change at any cost. As he keeps going down this path, drawing attention to the worst aspects of his important career, the biggest cost will be tarnishing his own legacy.
Vice seems to be trying hard to prove Chappelle’s point in that opening joke above. As many other top comics have noted in the past few years, comedy has become just another battleground for the PC word police. Here’s a comedy writer saying he won’t watch any of Chappelle’s “borderline conservative” comedy:
When I was writing for DL Hughley’s show my ultimate dream was to be writing for Chappelle Show. But now, Dave Chappelle is a bitter, borderline conservative, misogynist. Won’t watch any of his toxic bull shit. #sticksandstones#DaveChappellepic.twitter.com/AlNDzxOwZN
— Timothy Michael Jennings (@TheTimJennings) August 27, 2019
On the other hand, there’s another way to take the far-left lashing out at comedians:
If @vice is offended by Dave Chappelle’s Netflix special then you know at least one thing is true:
— Nick Searcy, INTERNATIONAL FILM & TELEVISION STAR (@yesnicksearcy) August 27, 2019
For the record, Chappelle has expressed some support for Colin Kaepernick (they both received an award from Harvard last year) and has mocked people upset about him kneeling in his act. So the idea that he’s suddenly a secret conservative is, well, laughable. But as we’ve seen on college campuses across the country, if you say one thing that the far-left finds offensive you go from zero to Nazi in record time.
Here we go. In the latest episode of “Comedians In Heresy Getting Blacklisted,” legendary stand-up comedian Dave Chappelle has once again ran afoul of the politically correct crowd with jokes that refuse to kiss the ring of every insane progressive cause on the market. Leftwing sites like Vice and Slate couldn’t handle Chappelle’s jokes on trans people and cancel culture, recommending that viewers “skip” his latest Netflix outing.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was accused of having an affair with a married man, whom she allegedly funneled large sums of money to through her campaign, in divorce documents filed this week.
Steven Menashi’s nomination for the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is the latest touchstone in the judicial confirmation wars.
Liberal commentators and activist groups are accusing Menashi of advancing extremist positions in the Trump administration and as an academic, while his conservative supporters say Democrats are warping his views. The 2nd Circuit is the federal appeals court that covers Connecticut, New York, and Vermont.
“These are the same types of smears the Democrats have thrown at several highly qualified people nominated by the president to serve as federal judges, including Amy Coney Barrett, Neomi Rao, Brian Buescher, Ken Lee, and, of course, with Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh—all of whom were confirmed,” said Judicial Crisis Network chief counsel Carrie Severino.
CNN published a review of opinion columns Menashi wrote as a college student and young professional Thursday, highlighting pieces critical of campus feminism, gay-rights organizations, and Islamic societies.
Writing for an American Enterprise Institute publication in 2000, Menashi accused college administrators of hypocrisy for opposing the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for gay soldiers while supporting separate campus housing for LGBT students.
In another column during the same period, Menashi said “Take Back the Night” marches, which promote awareness about sexual misconduct, are wrong to implicate men generally in rape or other forms of assault.
The Alliance for Justice, a liberal advocacy group, connected that rhetoric to Menashi’s recent work as a top lawyer at the Department of Education, where he helped craft new rules for adjudicating campus sexual assault allegations.
Those guidelines guarantee a presumption of innocence for the accused, and require that both parties have full access to the evidence. The Department of Education’s reforms were invariably applauded for strengthening due process or derided as patriarchal.
“Steven Menashi’s litany of racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks should be absolutely disqualifying for anyone seeking a lifetime seat on the federal bench,” said Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron. “At the Department of Education, he served as Betsy DeVos’s right-hand man as she rolled back Title IX protections and undermined equal access to quality education. There is nothing in his record that gives any indication that Menashi could be trusted to administer even-handed justice.”
Menashi’s conservative supporters say those criticisms rest on unfair distortions. Writing in National Review, Judicial Crisis Network’s Severino said the contested columns are generally thoughtful and measured.
“The left will look for material wherever they can find it to twist and misrepresent: law review articles, college newspaper columns—even high school yearbooks,” Severino wrote.
Yet college-era writings have dogged several Trump judicial nominees. Lawyer Ryan Bounds’s nomination for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals faltered on the Senate floor when GOP Sens. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Marco Rubio of Florida joined Democrats at the last minute to oppose his nomination.
The pair raised concerns over opinion pieces Bounds wrote as a Stanford undergraduate criticizing diversity policies and student activist groups, as well as Bounds’ failure to share those pieces with a judicial selection panel.
Judge Neomi Rao, who succeeded Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in March, faced similar scrutiny over an opinion column she wrote at Yale University that admonished women to avoid unwanted sexual interactions by staying sober. Rao apologized for the remark in a February letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee and was ultimately confirmed.
Some of Menashi’s more recent work has attracted similarly harsh criticism. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow panned a law review article he wrote in 2010 as a teaching fellow at Georgetown University Law Center, calling it “a high-brow argument for racial purity.”
The piece, called “Ethnonationalism and Liberal Democracy,” defends Israel against the common charge that its particular identity as a Jewish state contradicts principles of liberal democracy.
Menashi argued that many advanced democracies use ordinary policy means to promote a common sense of identity. Such fellow-feeling, Menashi believes, helps maintain democratic culture that has become a norm of the international order.
Menashi was a law professor at George Mason University and a partner in the New York offices of Kirkland & Ellis before he joined the Trump administration. He served in the Education Department, then joined the White House counsel’s office in September 2018. He is a graduate of Stanford Law School who clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Samuel Alito.
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(CNSNews.com)- (CNSNews.com)- Speaking on C-SPAN’s “After Words” on Saturday, Media Research Center (MRC) President Brent Bozell said CNN and MSNBC would “rather go down in flames” than “balance out” their network coverage.
“[I]f you’re CNN and you want to regain your audience, well, within 15 seconds a market analysis will tell you the conservatives left. Bring back – don’t go with the conservative standpoint, just even out, balance out your network coverage. Go back to news and you’re going to bring conservatives back,” Bozell said. “They’d rather go down in flames than do that. MSNBC would rather go down in flames.”
Asked why media aren’t listening to their consumers, who are clearly telling them what they need to do to regain audience and credibility, Bozell said it’s because “politics trumps business”:
“There’s a fallacy that says that business trumps politics. No, it doesn’t – politics trumps business when it comes to the news media, for that reason.”
Bozell then recalled how he once gave two pieces of advice to a man he knew who became president at CNN:
“The first one is: get on CNN One, or whatever your aircraft is, go to Palm Beach, bring your checkbook, ask around, try to find directions to this guy Rush Limbaugh’s house.
“Go to his house, knock on the door, open up your checkbook, sign it – a blank check. Give it to him, tell him he can fill it in for whatever amount he wants and do whatever he wants and in one week you’ll have the number one network on television. That’s all you have to do.”
“He said ‘Well, what’s your second idea?’ And I said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t pick a fight with Roger Ailes. He chews roofing nails for breakfast.’ Well, this guy did and he lost his job as a result.”
The lesson of the story, Bozell said, is that liberal media don’t have to become conservative in order to win back viewers. All they need to do is become balanced in their coverage.
Unfortunately, networks like CNN and MSNBC would “rather go down in flames” than provide fair and balanced news coverage, Bozell concluded:
“But the point was, if you’re CNN and you want to regain your audience, well within 15 seconds a market analysis will tell you the conservatives left. Bring back- don’t go with the conservative standpoint, just even out, balance out your network coverage. Go back to news and you’re going to bring conservatives back.”
“They’d rather go down in flames than do that. MSNBC would rather go down in flames. All these networks. Look at Fox, if you’re looking at this as a business proposition, the big kid on the block is Fox. So what do they do? They do the opposite of Fox. They know what they’re doing. They’d rather go down in flames than do what Fox is doing.”
Retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army Allen West (Screenshot)
Those on the left are beginning to remind me of the nemesis of Road Runner, Wiley Coyote, who continued to seek out Acme products to enable him to catch the Road Runner. And each time, the new attempts were to no avail. The left has had boxes shipped to them of Russia collusion, racism, recession, and all are failing, just as with the Coyote. They have no policy initiatives other than “free” and “open borders,” which are also failing. So, when all is lost, what does the left now turn to? Yes, now they’re quoting the Constitution and the Bible in an attempt to advance socialism.
You heard me correctly. The party that booed God back at their National Convention in 2012 in Charlotte now wants to “cherry-pick” the Bible to promote socialism. The party that embraces such [un]constitutional policies such as sanctuary states and cities for illegal immigrants now wants to quote from our rule of law? It all happened at a recent Democratic [Socialist] Party meeting, held in that bastion of constitutionalism and Christianity, San Francisco.
Below are the remarks, in pertinent part, from the Democratic Party meeting, according to The Washington Free Beacon:
“A speaker at the Democratic National Committee summer meeting Friday said if free health care is labeled ‘socialism’ by Republicans, then they should ‘acknowledge that the Bible must then promote socialism.’
“‘When we embrace moral language, we must ask does our policy care for the least of these? Does it lift up those who are most marginalized and dejected in our society? Does it establish justice? That is the moral question,’ said Rev. William Barber, who has spoken at several DNC meetings. ‘If someone calls it socialism, then we must compel them to acknowledge that the Bible must then promote socialism, because Jesus offered free health care to everyone, and he never charged a leper a co-pay.’
“DNC chair Tom Perez and others in audience gave a standing ovation before Barber took a shot at Republicans, saying, ‘If you want to have a moral debate, bring it on, baby.’
“‘The Bible says a nation will be judged by how it treats the poor and the sick and women and the immigrants,’ Barber said. ‘The Bible says that God makes it rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you want to call caring for folks socialism, then the Constitution is a socialist document because it calls us to promote the general welfare and to establish justice.’”
Well, as a Christian constitutional conservative I must admit, this absurdity is very comical to say the least. So here we go.
First of all, it is rather perplexing that the people who are incessantly raving about “separation of church and state” are invoking the Bible, and Jesus Christ, to promote socialism. How often do we hear the progressive, socialist left condemn Christians for attempting to create a “theocracy”, most recently Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? But you rarely hear leftists condemn Islamo-fascists for their theocracy, which, by the way, persecutes Christians.
I found it quite interesting that Rev. Barber failed to mention this Bible verse from 2 Thessalonians 3:10 (New International Version), “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.’”Hmm, maybe Rev. Barber does not seek a scripturally-based argument, but rather he prefers to just ad lib his way through … making the insidious assertion that Jesus Christ did not ask for a “co-pay.” I kinda think it a tad bit blasphemous to compare Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to a health insurance company.
Rev. Barber, sir, a moral debate, absolutely. I would be happy to enjoin you in such an intellectual engagement. I would present to you this Bible verse: Deuteronomy 30:15,19 (New International Version), “15 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. … 19 This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.”
Uh, pastor, and I use that term loosely here, perhaps you did not realize that you were speaking at the meeting of a political party that supports murdering unborn babies in the womb. As well, according to New York Governor Cuomo, it is not a party that embraces infanticide – in other words, the Canaanite god of child sacrifice, Moloch. As well, as a black “pastor,” how do you reconcile yourself knowing that since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, an estimated 20,000,000 black babies have been murdered in the womb? And I suppose you are okay with the progressive, socialist left’s support of the Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger?
Yes, sir, Rev. Barber. I am more than happy to have a “moral” debate with you.
I suppose the good Rev. Barber also has no issue with the progressive, socialist left’s position of gender, right? You know, we are now up to some 71 different genders. Obviously, Rev. Barber is comfortable telling the Judeo-Christian God that He was all wrong with just Adam and Eve?
And Rev. Barber, God only asks for 10 percent, so I guess since the Bible supports socialism, according to your cherry-picking scripture, then its okay for progressive socialists to demand seven, nine times more than God with demanding 70-90 percent tax rates. Hmm, I would prefer God’s tax rate over that of the progressive, socialist left … but do you?
Lastly, Rev. Barber, Christianity, you know, Jesus Christ, is based upon individual reconciliation, salvation and the Grace of God. No one can collectively enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, at least that is what I read in Romans. Socialism dismisses the existence of the individual. Individuals have no rights or liberties. There is only the collective determination, equality of outcomes, as dictated by man, secular humanists … the folks you had standing and cheering you. As a matter of fact, this is what 2 Corinthians 3:17 (New International Version) says, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
My spiritual liberty does not come from the government, or from the DNC. And as written by the father of classical liberalism, John Locke, my individual inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property are natural rights from my Creator, not Tom Perez, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Robert Francis O’Rourke, or any others in the long list of progressive socialist crew of collectivists.
In closing, ain’t it funny how the progressive, socialist left seeks out certain “Reverends” … Barber, Sharpton, and Jackson, to parrot their talking points by leveraging the Bible? My advice is that we dismiss these charlatans.
The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy about folks like Reverend William Barber in 2 Timothy 4:3-4 (New International Version), “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”
Allen West is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army. Mr. West is a Senior Fellow at the Media Research Center to support its mission to expose and neutralize liberal media bias. Mr. West also writes daily commentary on his personal website theoldschoolpatriot.com.
